“Merkozy” Letter to EU: Now Is the Time to Strip Countries of Sovereignty

The New American WRITTEN BY BOB ADELMANN

THURSDAY, 08 DECEMBER 2011 17:14

In his candid appraisal of the letter from Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy to the European Union meeting that starts Friday in Brussels, Dan Murphy makes clear that this summit will be different from the previous 20: This one is determined to override national sovereignty to save the euro. The core of the letter is the offer of the fatal alternative to the euro zone nations: Either give up essential sovereign control over your budgets to the EU, or destroy the euro. The “Merkozy” letter said, The current crisis has uncovered the deficiencies in the construction of the [European Monetary Union] mercilessly. We need to remedy those deficiencies…. We need more binding and more ambitious rules and commitments for the Euro area Member States. They should reflect that sharing a single currency means sharing responsibility for the Euro area as a whole. The building blocks of the new Stability and Growth Union are: A strengthened institutional architecture. Euro area governance needs to be substantially reinforced. The problem, until now, has been the virtual impossibility of amending unanimously the various treaties under which the EU currently operates. With the clock ticking amid increasingly nervous financial markets, there is no time for that nicety. And so a way has been found: doing an end run around the process by using a little-known clause in the Schengen treaty to speed up implementation of the “strengthened institutional architecture” that is needed. In a speech on Thursday in Marseille, Sarkozy expanded on just what the new agreement would require, along with guarded references to how it might be enforced. He said, “Never has [a united] Europe been so necessary. Never has it been in so much danger…. Never has the risk of a disintegration of Europe been so great. Europe is facing an extraordinarily dangerous situation.” What is needed, he said, is the ability to enforce budgetary discipline by penalizing those countries that overspend under the new rules. Read the entire article